Leger-Felicite Sonthonax

Leger-Felicite Sonthonax (1763-1813) was a member of the Girondists and was given command of the 7,000 French Army troops in Saint-Domingue to crush the Haitian Revolution in the 1790s. However, he later sided with the rebels, and he abolished slavery in Haiti in 1793.

Biography
Leger-Felicite Sonthonax was born in 1763 in Oyonnax, France, and he was a lawyer affiliated with the Girondists and the Society of the Friends of the Blacks during the French Revolution. In 1792, he was sent to Saint-Domingue to enforce the social equality there as well as to maintain French rule over the colony. He was sympathetic towards people of mixed descent, whom he saw as the potential leaders of an independent Haiti; 60% of the white population left after they failed to overthrow Sonthonax. To gain support for his rule, he abolished slavery in 1793, but Toussaint L'ouverture saw through his vanity and hunger for power, and in 1797 L'ouverture sent him back to France, where he died in 1813.